Felipe Massa branded the tyre failures at Silverstone as "an unacceptable situation" and said he was putting his safety "in God's hands" during the British Grand Prix.

There were four separate instances of tyre failures during the race, with Massa's left rear puncture causing him to spin off at high speed at Turn 5. Focusing first on the impact the problem had on his race, Massa said he was on course for a podium with the pace he was showing until he was forced to crawl back to the pits.

"I think what happened today was an unacceptable situation with the tyres; not just with me but with many other cars having a similar issue," Massa said. "Fortunately nothing really dangerous happened but it was really close. The race today was amazing for me, I did a fantastic start, had a fantastic first lap, the pace was fantastic, overtaking was fantastic but then I had the problem with the tyres which took away the opportunity to finish on the podium. It was really tough because of that but the race was fantastic."

When some of the other dangers of the tyre failures were put to Massa, he admitted that he didn't back off at all during the race and just had to hope he didn't have another problem which could have resulted in a major accident.

"It's everything, you have a lot of debris on the track as well. It's difficult to know what to do because we still need to push, you are there and you need to push. Especially when I changed the tyres I was thinking maybe it will happen again but I was just pushing and putting it in God's hands; it's not really a great feeling to do but that's out situation. So that's why they have to do something with the tyres."

The International Rugby Board (IRB) have stripped Australia of the right to host a round of the World Sevens Series, scheduled for Brisbane on 16-17 February, after the Australian government's refusal to provide visas for the squad from Fiji